The architecture of academic prestige: Why vocational education remains the cinderella service

“ The primary question that I suggest should be asked is: what are the effects of prestige (which nonetheless has many practical benefits) within various economic spheres and in the context of a transition to open access? As I will show, these systems of prestige contribute to the behaviour of academics towards the implementation of open access, to the economics of scholarly communications and also to the external perception of the academy. ”

“ The purpose of this chapter is to address the problems of supply-side economics (academic prestige) and also the pragmatics of the demand-side crisis (affordability) so that, when I later approach the monograph in Chapter 4 and innovations to peer review in Chapter 5, the confluence of quality control and economics is explicit.
cultural and symbolic capital in academic publishing
Any academic in the twenty-first century knows that publication is important. It is important to communicate findings to other interested parties but it is also crucial for career progression. ”

“ Usually the cost to a college, of educating a young man, very much exceeds what he pays for it, and is often three or four times as much. The higher the education, the greater this proportion will be; and a university of the highest class should anticipate only a small accession to its income from the fees of students. Hence the test I have applied must give a true representation of the possibilities in every case. According to the figures, only sixteen colleges and universities have $500,000 or over of invested funds, and only one-half of these have $1,000,000 and over. ”

“ If their constitPage 102uency, both rich and poor, would become imbued with the spirit of the Colonial fathers, and arouse themselves to give liberally, their power and influence would be multiplied a hundred fold. "Let it not be forgotten," says President Thwing, "that if the college and university have large need of the wealth of the community, this wealth has yet a larger need of the college and university. Without the aid of the higher education in the past, much of the wealth could not have been created; and without the higher education of the present, wealth would now become sordid ”

“ I know it has been contended that party patronage, or, in other words, feeding partizans at the public expense, is an essential element in the existence of a government. This is the doctrine of corruption. The Education Department—the highest public department in Upper Canada—existed for more than thirty years without such an element, and with increased efficiency and increased strength in the public estimation, during the whole of that period. Justice and virtue, and patriotism and intelligence, are stronger elements of power and usefulness than those of buying and rewarding partizans ”

“ Here the parallel to the mediæval church is not exact, for in the latter it was the monasteries and religious houses that were the chief sources of offence, while the colleges and private institutions of higher learning which correspond to them are singularly free from anything worse than wasteful internal politics. It is the public educational system which by reason of its contact with political government partakes most palpably of the corruption that attends the democratic State. ”

“ The Parliament, which voted one hundred thousand pounds of the nation's money for the queen's horses and hounds, had but thirty thousand to spare for the education of her people. No honor attends the educators of the people; no wealth is heaped up for them; no beautiful buildings are erected for their use; no great libraries got ready at the public charge; no costly buildings are provided. You wonder at the colleges and collegiate churches of Oxford and of Cambridge ”

“ And, while we value great seats of learning, which provide for the devotees who pursue knowledge for the love of it, we have to guard against the prostitution of this idea to pernicious ends in current education. For, while the exceptional scholar may ignore the practical and the beneficial, the mass of mankind can not do so. They live in a world of action and struggle, and have minds to guide them in their labors and conflicts. ”

“ Prestige, however, is a proxy measure for quality. It economically mirrors academic labour scarcity because it stands as a surrogate in order to avoid the labour-intensive practices of constantly reappraising academic material in every situation. A journal’s or publisher’s prestige, then, can be considered as a labour-saving shorthand that, in theory, should denote a venue in which top experts deemed other material to be first rate. ”

“ From this logic, a partial answer to the first of my questions can emerge: the accumulation of prestige, as a form of symbolic capital, is difficult as the system is heavily weighted towards the normative. The use of prestige as a proxy measure by research exercises and hiring procedures has, to some extent, a disciplinary function that encourages publication in known venues. Likewise, publishers have an incentive to seek out academics who are known quantities (possessing social and symbolic capital) , particularly in the monograph sphere, to preserve their own prestige. ”

“ Unfortunately in faculties where complete harmony exists the dangers of the growth of the spirit of mutual admiration becomes a menace to healthy mental activity. The objectionable spirit of partisanship is frequently more marked in the professional schools (theology, medicine, law) than it is in the academic departments of the universities. Eternal vigilance is the price to be paid for intellectual as well as political liberty. ”

“ That was the original purpose of the Universities; and the more they continue to fulfil that purpose the more will they secure to us that real freedom from tradition, from custom, from mere opinion and superstition, which can be gained by independent study only; the more will they foster that "human development in its richest diversity" which Mill, like Humboldt, considered as the highest object of all society.
Such academic teaching need not be confined to the old Universities. There is many a great University that sprang from smaller beginnings than your Midland Institute. ”

“ We have had centuries of that "thorough intellectual training," which it has been the boast of universities to give, applied to "practical politics" without so much as even discovering the existence of a social science. A higher education, which prides itself on the perfection of its mental discipline, and which sacrifices every thing else to this idea, has thrown its graduates by thousands, age after age, into political and public life to very little purpose, so far as the increase of our scientific knowledge of society is concerned ”

“ It had something to do with the hesitation displayed by civil authorities in respect to obtaining the services of our graduates. Though such an education as that which we secure for our alumni ought to be a passport to high employment ill any profession, yet if an idea gains ground that they become A hat is termed unpractical, and are prone to imagine that after having learnt so much at college they have little or nothing more to learn in life, then they will fail to reap the fruit of their labours at college. ”

“ He is ordained, and takes charge of a parish, only to be laughed at by the farmers, the trades people, and even the old women, for he can hardly talk of religion without betraying a want of common sense."
Have we not here delineated the natural outcome of a method of instruction which, despising utility and disparaging modern knowledge, would, if strictly carried out, multiply incapables on every hand? Classical studies are theoretically predominant in most of our higher institutions of education. ”

“ The tendency nowadays to replace apprenticeship by professional instruction in college or university is a fatal one. The academic purpose should be concentrated on the development of the mind as an instrument of thought. It may do this by aid of philosophy, or by aid of language, or of science; but it can not do it by any form of purely professional instruction. By technical education I mean something very different from an instruction in the facts, formulae and usages of a profession. ”

“ Education likewise is by way of being faithless to itself, by alliance with secular power, political and financial, by the substitution of its own institutional advancement for disinterested service of truth, by becoming likewise an end in itself. ”

“ What is the educational value of an institution of learning that expels its best students because they “attract more attention than their professors”? What is the intellectual level of a college that expels from its courses the ablest of its students for some slight infringement, and that an involuntary one, under the pretext that it is done for the sake of class-discipline, “for the general good of the class”? What travesty on education is a system that suppresses genius in the interest of mediocrity? What is the cultural, the humanistic value of an education that puts a prize on mediocrity? ”

“ We labor under the false impression that the child is naturally inapt and deficient. To make up for this apparent deficiency we force the child's mind into narrow channels, crippling and deforming it into mean mediocrity. The child is run into the rigid moulds of home, school, and college with the result of permanent mutilation of originality and genius. The individual is deformed, because the critical spirit of inquiry and originality is racked on the Procrustes' bed of home and school. ”

“ Individuality disappears, and there is small opportunity to bestow special care upon those personal traits of character and genius which in smaller and less mechanical schools are developed and cultivated so advantageously. The exactions and controversies of politics, unfortunately, encroach more upon the administration of school affairs in large places than in small ones. The people are farther removed from the schools, and they manifest less interest in them because they have less responsibility and power in managing and directing them. ”

“ Bell, while the whigs and dissenters rallied round Mr. Lancaster. The system was in itself a bad one. It was the parent of the modern pupil-teacher system and gave permanence to the lamentable practice of employing untrained teachers. We may, therefore, believe that the quarrel for precedence was unimportant. It had, however, two vast issues. It created the modern religious or denominational controversy which has had such a marked influence on the development of primary education in England, and it also brought education into modern politics. ”

“ The one paramount danger, the most comprehensively unfavorable factor affecting ominously the prospects of the higher education—and the lower not less so, [1] though differently—is the undue dominance of administration: in policy, in measures, in personal relations, in all the distinctive interests of education, and the welfare of ideas and ideals. What is imperiled most directly is the academic career: its worth, its service, its security, its satisfactions, its attractiveness to the higher types of men. ”

“ I am but suggesting that a large measure of this spirit of depersonalization, somewhat more loftily conceived, shall dominate all who serve the administration of the grove. Administration must ever be second; and often must it be last. Academic perspective can be retained only by an advancement to the foreground in every presentation of scientific insight, educational wisdom and commanding personal quality, by the retirement to the background of all auxiliary services however essential, difficult or worthy, so that those within and without shall see, hear and understand. ”

“ It is that young men of character and self-respect will refuse to engage in the work of teaching (except as a makeshift) as long as the authorities in charge of education remain blind to the professional character of the occupation, and deal with those engaged in it as objects of suspicion, or, at best, as irresponsible and unpractical theorists, whose actions must be kept constantly under control and restricted by all manner of limitations and petty regulations. ”

“ A practical, industrial education does not appear to be within the conception of our public schools. This is just the line of education that would make them useful to the poor. We are hearing much at present of the dignity of manual labor ”

“ What we most need then, is a good business practical Education; because, the Classical and Professional education of so many of our young men, before their parents are able to support them, and community ready to patronize them, only serves to lull their energy, and cripple the otherwise, praiseworthy efforts they would make in life. A Classical education, is only suited to the wealthy, or those who have a prospect of gaining a livelihood by it. The writer does not wish to be understood, as underrating a Classical and Professional education ”

“ Wilson makes no compromise with existing conditions; concedes not one point to the second-rate standards that we supinely accept; faces the question of cost, that basic difficulty which most theoretical educators waive aside, and which the public never dreams of trying to meet and overcome. Here are some of his proposals.
The New Education [he writes] will include training and experience in domestic science, cookery and home-making; agriculture and horticulture; pure and applied science, and mechanical and commercial activities with actual production, distribution and exchange of commodities. ”

“ Are health, morals, useful habits, vigorous intellects, and life, worth nothing? Is money expended for the improvement and preservation of these thrown away?
If manual labor schools increased the expenses of education fourfold, they would still deserve the warm patronage of the public, and all who have the ability should send their sons to them to be educated, in preference to any other institutions, even should they have as many of them as the Patriarch, or be endowed with the riches of Crœsus.
It is an ill-judged economy which saves money at the sacrifice of life, health, and morals. ”

“ But admit for a moment that manual labor schools are an utter failure as regards the pecuniary advantages which they afford. Admit, if you please, that the manual labor feature is an expensive part of education, and that to comply with it an education will cost more than on any other plan. The argument for their utility remains alike unanswered and unshaken. Is not the education thus obtained a more perfect one? ”

“ This new education deemed itself “pragmatic,” subordinating America’s students to the demands of the new industrial economy for skills-based, jobs-oriented training. Rather than examine the past for those unchanging truths and insights into our shared humanity, students today are taught to assume that the founders’ views were narrow and deficient: that’s just how people used to think, but we know better now. ”

“ The Decline of American Education This pronounced decline of American education began in the late nineteenth century when progressive reformers began discarding the traditional understanding of education. The old understanding involved conveying a body of transcendent knowledge and practical wisdom that had been passed down for generations and which aimed to develop the character and intellect of the student. The new education, by contrast, pursued contradictory goals that are at the same time mundane and unrealistically utopian. ”

“ The college, originally for secondary education, but with higher education attached, is in a state of unstable equilibrium. The distinction between courses for culture, courses for higher specialized liberal training and courses fitting for the professions appears to have a historical explanation rather than a logical justification. Every student during all his course of education—namely, from the time he is born to the time he dies—should do the three things that are artificially separated in our universities. ”

“ Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. ”

“ She has shown that an advanced education has an appreciable money value to young men in a much larger proportion of cases than it has to young women. Much as we may talk of "education of the mind" and "discipline of the faculties," the education of boys and young men has mainly been dominated by practical ends. ”

“ Our schools, our high schools, our colleges and universities are all animated with the same sordid aim of giving electives for early specialization in the art of money-getting. We may say with Mill that our schools and colleges give no true education, no true culture. We drift to the status of Egypt and India with their castes of early trained mechanics, professionals and shopkeepers. Truly educated men we shall have none. We shall become a nation of narrow-minded philistines, well contented with their mediocrity. ”

“ Our education is in a state of chaos in regard to the relative values of different kinds of knowledge. The waste of time and effort over comparatively worthless studies is something quite appalling, and it is everywhere aggravated by plying scholars with premiums for special attainments. Rich blockheads, with narrow notions and tenacious crotchets, smitten with the vanity of becoming public benefactors, go into the schools and found prizes and medals which set the students to racing in any direction which the whim or caprice of the donor may indicate. ”

“ We Americans pride ourselves upon being a practical people, yet fail to treat education as a practical question. Therefore, as a rule, our public schools are neither practically governed nor fitted in a practical way for the ends which they should serve. Blinded by time-honored fictions, we ignore the plainest facts. ”

“ The presence of inefficient and ineffective workers in the teaching profession undoubtedly has much to do with the present low salaries of teachers. The kind of work done, and the quality of it on the whole, have not been good enough to enable organized education to compel the payment of better salaries. Whatever complaints we may make of the dominance of the dollar in American life, the incontestable fact exists that the public that pays out three fourths of its taxes for protection of life and property willingly, pays out one fourth for public education grudgingly. ”

“ Practical politics consists in ignoring facts, but education and politics are two different and often contradictory things. ”

“ The founders insisted that universities should be at the core of preserving American republicanism by instructing students and future leaders of its true basis and instilling in them not just an understanding but a reverence for its principles and core documents. Today, our higher education system does almost the precise opposite. Colleges peddle resentment and contempt for American principles and history alike, in the process weakening attachment to our shared heritage. ”